Poems by Karen Terrey
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Bear on I-40
by Karen Terrey
Karen lives in Truckee, California, within sight of the Truckee River, part of the Lake Tahoe Watershed. The river runs about 120 miles from its source, Lake Tahoe, to its end in Pyramid Lake, just north of Fernley, Nevada.
A black bear hangs from arched girders
below the concrete bridge.
He knows green lichen, crashing water on
granite. He doesn’t know transparent webbing
stretched below. Men on ropes,
tied in to the bridge above, spin like spiders.
He doesn’t know physics of a net, security
of a line, skill of a knot.
Mostly, the bear knows silence,
involuntary breathing. His snout
scents humans cars buses roaring overhead.
When he leaped off the bridge
he twisted to cling a lip of structure
beneath, heavy body tightening.
After the swinging, tendons strained,
claws scraped. Now,
hanging.
Lake sources still hide beneath gauzy ice.
Manzanita branches red in the dusk. Slowly
he chins up the support,
black eyes blinking.
The fall is long. The net is strung.
His thick waiting a dark mountain at night.
He doesn’t know net.
© Karen Terrey
Crossing the River
by Karen Terrey
From Canary Spring 2012
After a record-breaking night,
slush flowed on top the river’s roil
like dirt specks floating across an eyeball,
tricking us into thinking something close
is far away. Ice vellum wrapped rocks along the shoreline
and air bubbles milled like field mice trapped beneath.
As close as it gets to freezing over,
each frosted branch
encased with eager light.
A panting buck on three legs by the black water line
and two fat coyotes nearby,
eyeing chickadees hopping along red willow bobbins.
Maybe he was resting
after a slow night of quiet stalking,
the coyotes trailing just close enough so he couldn’t stop
stumbling
through the frozen forest. It was beautiful,
how the gold of the coyotes’ manes
grew thick in the sun like a resolution.
The buck’s broken leg
bent beneath his chest, silent breath clouds.
Like a branch cracking beneath a storm’s weight,
he rocked across the icy river,
up a low bank,
across rusted railroad tracks,
heavy rack dipping and rising.
Standing, the coyotes watched as if they had just noticed
the mule deer, then trotted along the edge. It was beautiful
how the buck kept going. How he didn’t.
This poem previously appeared in Grey Sparrow Journal, Winter 2011/12
© Karen Terrey
Darwin Would Agree
by Karen Terrey
From Canary Spring 2013
Each soft thing emerges from the dirt
stamped by snow’s weight and cool April sunshine
gentles the living to live more.
People aren’t bad -
they’re just not good at all endeavors.
But it’s the multi-taskers that get eaten.
What’s left is the starkness
of what mattered,
and intent,
roots exposed, new leaders of stem
poking up anyway like a skinny foal leaning against a mare
because that’s what life does,
even if the wood cutter
the coyote
the heart breaker
have begun their inevitable approach.
© Karen Terrey
The Call
by Karen Terrey
From Canary Summer 2013
Crouch in that still meadow, narrow rush
between rising hills, open water,
small eggs in nests pursed into willows.
Strange red-tipped cranes gurgle their warning
in grass-bent sunlight.
Mid-stream, broken railroad ties
settle further a private angle
like a long marriage. Far from home,
the cranes appear as tall
as you. Stiff with caution, the pair
just dropped from their sky into this unknown refuge.
If you surprise them in the wet sedge,
stick legs bright, toes graceful -
question everything.
Among the edging pines, their calls weave,
falling through tall necks like water
sifting under the broken bridge, slow
and clear to its mucky bottom.
Love. You know how.
© Karen Terrey